Did PoodleCorp Hack 'Pokémon Go?' Most Likely Not

In case you didn’t notice, Pokémon Go was down Saturday morning. Millions of players desperate to walk around and only find Pidgeys have been stuck without access to the mobile phenomenon. The game is currently back up and running, though it is a crashing a lot. The Poke step counter in the bottom right is still not working properly when the game is working.

According to Gizmodo , Pokémon Go went down because of a hack. Poodle Corp, who have claimed responsibility over attacks on famous YouTubers like Linus Tech Tips, H3H3 productions and boogie298, took credit for the alleged attack against Pokémon Go on its Twitter. I’m not sure how much validity is in these claims though – hacking YouTubers and taking down an entire international app are two different things.

Hacktivist groups can take responsibility for anything without needing to prove themselves. They are already operating illegally so nobody can prove them wrong. Poodle Corp allegedly -took down these YouTubers last month by getting their SIM card from their service provider and then gaining access to all of their information. A DDOS attack this size seems a bit unrealistic from them.

It is more likely that the servers went down because Niantic released the game in more countries before the servers were stable. I was barely able to play Pokémon Go , every time I’d try to catch a Nidoran or a Doduo, the game would crash. Either it would zoom in on the pokeball, or show a giant shadow looming over the Pokémon's head.

We still aren’t sure why Pokémon Go is having so many problems during its launch week. Niantic must not have expected the game to explode in popularity like it has and is scrambling to get everything it needs to maintain the servers.